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Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Time for Noah’s Ark again?

The world is experiencing extreme weather. In the
US, California’s drought is the worst in 100-years while the East Coast
faced a massive snowstorm with freezing temperatures. On the other side
of the world, Australia continues to deal with intense summer heat and
droughts, causing major bush fires. There has been severe winter
flooding in the UK and Europe; extreme cold and snow in the Eastern US
and Japan and so on.

Now this may just be random, outliers in the normal distribution of
weather conditions, or it could be that the globe is reaching a peak in a
cycle of weather, or it could be the ever-growing impact of climate
change as the world heats up. In fact, it could be all three, as the
first two possible causes can be considered as immediate or cyclical and
the last (climate change) as structural or ‘ultimate’. The facts
speak. Since 1997, the world has experienced the 13 warmest years ever
recorded out of 15, according to the UN. June 2012 marked the 328th
consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century
average. In 2013, extreme weather events included several all-time
temperature records. Snow cover in Europe and North America was above
average, while the Arctic ice was 4,5% below the 1981–2010 average.

Northern Hemisphere weather extremes have been linked to the Arctic
sea ice melting. In January alone, 11233 weather-related deaths were
reported in India. Bangladesh faced the lowest temperature since
country’s independence. In Europe, last summer’s weather was bizarre.
Finland and most of Northern Countries got the highest temperatures in
Europe during May and June, while Western- and Middle Europe faced much
cooler weather and even their wettest May and June ever.
Overall, prolonged heat waves in the Northern Hemisphere set new record
high temperatures.
There’s little doubt that climate change is contributing to the extreme weather disasters we’ve been experiencing (see my post,http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2013/09/28/climate-change-and-capitalism/).

Numerous studies, such as the US NOAA’s 2011 State of the Climate report,
shows the clear links between extreme weather and human-induced climate
change. In the UK, the media is bouncing about the extreme levels of
rain and wind hitting the island and causing significant and prolonged
flooding. The UK Met Office, the body that forecasts the weather,
announced that climate change was likely to be a factor in the extreme
weather that has hit much of the UK in recent months: “all the
evidence suggests there is a link to climate change” and “there is no
evidence to counter the basic premise that a warmer world will lead to
more intense daily and hourly rain events.” The UK Met office said there had been the “most exceptional period of rainfall in 248 years”.

Climate models are forecasting increased episodes of flooding for the
UK under climate change conditions. According to the UK Met Office,
four of the wettest five years have occurred since 2000, a statistic
made all the more remarkable given the drought between 2010 and
2012. Peer-reviewed scientific research, performed by academics in
collaboration with RMS scientists, found that climate change increased
the likelihood of the floods that impacted England and Wales in the year
2000 in which 10,000 homes and businesses were flooded due to heavy
autumn precipitation. And Britain’s Rowntree Foundation study,http://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/files/jrf/urban-flood-risk-full.pdf)
found that this was a direct result of the physical principle that a
warmer atmosphere holds higher amounts of water vapour and UK
regional climate models predict increased winter rainfall (especially in
the north and west) and more intense, highly localised summer rainfall
(especially in the south and east). These predictions also accord with
recent changes in rainfall over the period 1961–2006 which have seen
many parts of the UK affected by severe and highly damaging floods. The
study concluded “Whilst no single flood can unequivocally be
attributed to climate change, there is evidence that the probability of
floods (in this instance, the regional floods affecting England and
Wales in 2000) is increasing as a result of anthropogenic greenhouse gas
emissions.”

But while the British press gushes about the sorry state of a few
thousands people in the richer and
leafier parts of England like
Somerset or Surrey, the most damage from extreme rainfall, flooding and
wind is likely to be in the poorer urban areas. As the Met Office put
it: “there is now little doubt that a warmer and wetter UK will
experience more floods with greater impacts in urban areas.” In
particular, there is the increased risk of pluvial flooding. River
banks overflowing is called fluvial flooding; pluvial flooding is when
combined systems (storm water and foul water sewers) are overwhelmed,
the foul water sewers surcharge onto the streets. The resulting flood is
a mixture of surface water and untreated sewage which produces a more
severe health hazard.

Pluvial flood risk accounts for approximately one-third of flood risk
from all sources in the UK. Approximately 2 million people in UK urban
areas (settlements with a population over 10,000) are exposed to an
annual pluvial flood risk of 0.5 per cent or greater (‘1 in 200-year’
event). An additional 1.2 million people in urban areas could be put at
risk by 2050 from a combination of climate change (300,000) and
population growth (900,000). Settlements across the UK with higher
rainfall also tend to have greater levels of social deprivation.

As one blogger put it: “The Environment Agency has taken its fair
share of blame for the flooding misery in Somerset , but there is an
industry which has escaped criticism. And unlike the quango, it’s not
short of a billion or two. Step forward the privatised water industry
which has a key role in dealing with our storm and sewage water. In the
last six years water companies have made £11 billion in profits from our
water bills, surely enough to have stopped its customers from having
raw sewage flooding into their homes and down their streets every time
there is a heavy downpour. Dispatches has been investigating the role
of the water companies in the country’s recent flood problems and while
Somerset have been dealing with record rainfalls and storm surges many
homes across the country have been dealing with another consequence of
the deluge: sewage flooding into their homes and down their streets.
When it rains heavily, our underground infrastructure can become
overwhelmed and raw sewage can get discharged onto our streets , rivers
and to a growing number of unfortunate people into their homes.
According to the Consumer Council for Water, complaints from homeowners
about sewer flooding are up by 50% compared to last year.”

The private sector and the private water management monopolies that
are supposed to provide decent water and sewage facilities are not not
up to the task. Profit for shareholders comes before service to the
public. As a result, basic infrastructure investment in sewage and
water, roads, rail etc is inadequate – and yet the world, including the
richer capitalist countries, is facing increased risk of ‘natural
disasters’ as the global climate changes and, with it, the weather
conditions.

Every year there is a major disaster in the emerging economies, with
thousands dying and hundreds of thousands losing their homes and
livelihoods. But the media only remembers the events that hit the rich
economies. The most infamous was the Katrina hurricane, the bursting of
the levees and the flooding of the homes of the poor in New Orleans.
Not only did the federal and local governments fail to act quickly and
efficiently, we now know that warnings of such a calamity had been
voiced years before. But instead of spending more to upgrade the
levees, federal and state governments actually cut back on such
infrastructure funding. After all, such spending was of no value to rich
living up on their hilltop homes.

It’s the same story in the current flooding crisis in the UK. In
November 2012, the government announced plans to spend £120 million
(US$183 million) on flood defences, split between new areas targeted for
protection and speeding up protection already being built. But this
came after a period of budget cutting, with government climate advisers
in the summer of 2012 noting a 12% decrease in flood defence spending
from the previous year. Construction began on 93 new flood defences in
February 2013 with a government pledge of an additional £2.3 billion
(US$3.5 billion) until 2015.
Despite this activity, some of the largest projects, like the £80
million (US$122 million) coastal defence at Rossall, Lancashire, are to
protect from storm surge rather than the pluvial flooding that
dominated 2012’s losses. According to the RMS UK Inland Flood Model, an
annual flood loss of £1.2 billion (US$1.8 billion) can be expected
approximately once every decade. The RMS model also estimates that only
50% of the average annual loss (AAL) comes from major river flooding,
with the other half from small river and stream flooding,
flash flooding, pluvial flooding, and localized heavy precipitation.

Even the classical economist of capitalism and the so-called guru of
free markets, Adam Smith recognised the need for public spending in
infrastructure because the private sector could not do it. In his
Wealth of Nations. Smith explained: “The first and last duty of the
sovereign is that of erecting and maintaining those public institutions
and those public works, which though they may be in the highest degree
advantageous to a great society are, however, of such a nature that the
profit could never repay the expense to any individual.” And Smith meant by this “good roads, navigable canals, harbours and education”.

The American Society of Civil Engineers has continually complained
that America’s infrastructure is rotting away. It found that one in
five American bridges were “structurally deficient”. While the
number of miles travelled by cars and trucks had doubled in the past 25
years, highway lane miles had risen only 45%. Demand for electricity
had increased by 25%, but the construction of new transmission
facilities had fallen by 30%. This deterioration had lost 870,000 jobs
that could have been secured with new projects, while the costs of
moving goods had risen significantly. The ASCE reckoned that there was
$100bn of potential work available. Instead the US Congress plans to cut
such spending by 35% over the next six years.

More extreme weather is on its way and the risk of calamity involving
millions is rising sharply. To avoid this, we can rely only on
uninterested private monopolies and governments engaged in cutting back
on so-called ‘discretionary’ public spending. It’s another consequence
of the dominance of the capitalist mode of production. There is a UN
summit in New York on climate change and the weather in September. We
may have to rebuild Noah’s Ark before then.